Continuity mistake: When Jabba pulls Leia's chain in the sail barge, Bib Fortuna is standing on the right side of the screen, a few meters away. He then takes one step forward, but in the next shot he is suddenly standing behind Leia, as he's pushing her against Jabba. He was too far away from them in the previous shot to have reached them that quickly.
Continuity mistake: After Luke cuts off Darth Vader's hand, he turns his head to face the Emperor twice, once in the close-up and once in the wideshot. (01:53:10)
Continuity mistake: When they get ambushed in the shield generator complex, an imperial in black appears from the right of the screen in front of the ledge with the railing. Han throws the container in his hands at the imperial. If you notice, the imperial actually begins to jump over the railing before the box even hits him.
Revealing mistake: When C3PO and R2D2 are picked up in the sand, there is no sand falling off them. Obviously, C3PO's legs and R2D2 where just placed behind some sand (and not in it) or they used blue screen in this shot.
Continuity mistake: When Luke and Han are being executed on Tatooine, Han says his eyes are getting better but still bad. Then he looks directly at Luke and says "You're gonna die here." In the very next line of dialog, Han's head is turned a different way. It looks like it was a different shot.
Continuity mistake: In the scene of the rebels planting explosives in the bunker, the first shot shows someone with gloves planting an explosive. Then it cuts to a wide shot of Han's team and none of them are wearing that style of glove. (01:51:10)
Audio problem: When Lando is inside the Death Star we see a shot of him scraping the side of some metal. Then he says "That was too close." His voice has the same echo applied to it as the sound effects in the narrow metal tunnel. For unknown reasons this mistake wasn't even fixed in the DVD.
Other mistake: During the final confrontation with Vader on the Death Star, Luke bashes a catwalk railing with his light saber several times, but there are no burns, marks, or indentations on it at all. Considering the power of a light saber (Qui Gon melted a steel door in Phantom Menace), some damage should be visible. Only when he hacks off Vader's hand does the light saber slice through the rail.
Continuity mistake: When the Emperor is torturing Luke, in the shot after Luke groans, "Father, please", Vader and the Emperor are standing further away from each other than in the previous and following shots where both are visible. (01:51:20)
Other mistake: When the ground battle on Endor begins, Leia runs to the bunker, and as the doors close, she fires a shot. In the original version of the movie, the blaster smokes, but no laser beam comes out of it and no sound is heard (do not confuse this with the sound of the doors closing). In the Special Edition, the sound has been added, but the laser is still missing. (01:38:05)
Other mistake: In the original cinema release, one of the subtitles for Jabba's conversation is incorrectly spelled - 'there will be no bargin'. This was corrected for the video release.
Continuity mistake: After Leia removes her helmet in Jabba's palace, her hair changes on the right side of her head, depending on the camera angle.
Deliberate mistake: The shots of the prisoner skiff during the transport to the Sarlacc Pit are reversed. This can, for example, be seen as Chewie's bandolier is on the wrong side, and that Han's shirt is overlaying the wrong way.
Continuity mistake: As Boba Fett nods to the disguised Leia after the latter turns off the thermal detonator, his costume is reversed due to the negative being flipped. The easiest part of his costume to see this on is his antenna, which is on the left-hand side of his head, whereas normally it would be on his right.
Continuity mistake: When Wicket sits down next to Leia on the log, he's holding his spear straight up. In the next shot, it is pointing downwards. (01:01:35)
Continuity mistake: In the first shot of the hologram of Endor and the Death Star, the Death Star orbits Endor in an counter-clockwise direction. In the subsequent shots, the Death Star orbits in a clockwise direction.
Revealing mistake: When Han Solo lifts his hands up and he spots the Walker that Chewie and two Ewoks are in, one of his hands is transparent, and the trees are visible through his hand.
Suggested correction: They are not transparent. What you are seeing is glare from the bright sky in the background. You can see other ghost images matching the bright white portions of the shot. Besides, there would be no reason for it to be transparent. It appears to be a fully on-location shot with no compositing.
Completely not true. You can see the trees through his hands; therefore, they are transparent.
Look closer. There is a white ghost image that matches the bright white sky, offset to the left and rotated slightly. And why would the hand be transparent? This is not a composite shot.
While it's not a composite shot, that would mean that the shot of the imperial officer yelling "freeze" in the original version wouldn't have been transparent. But it's not a composite shot too, therefore, they are transparent.
This comment makes no sense. What Imperial officer are you referring to and what does it have to do with this shot? And if this isn't a composite shot, which you seem to be admitting, why would the hand be transparent? Do you think Harrison Ford's hand actually became see-through?
Revealing mistake: Look carefully at the close-ups of C3PO's waste where the exposed wires are. You can tell it's fake wiring on top of a black suit which is particularly noticeable when the actor inside the costume as his stomach is moving when he has to breathe.
Continuity mistake: In the Special Edition, Sy Snootles (the lead singer of Jabba's band) is CGI, but in the original version, she was a puppet, looking a bit differently. In the first shot of the band sequence, you can see the old puppet singing on the stage. (00:11:50)
Continuity mistake: After Vader's shuttle lands on Endor, as the AT-AT is walking towards one of the ramps, you can see that the ramps are connected right next to the lift, under the landing pad. But when Vader exits the lift, there's a circular platform going around the lift, which wasn't there in the previous shots. (01:19:40)
